Decide what to buy | the Reevoo.com blog, featuring news on TVs, cameras, laptops, mp3 players & other gadgets, shopping tips and deals, reviews and more

Fake review stories have been all over the news in the past few months. Whether it’s manufacturers and service providers posting fake reviews about their products to try and increase sales or even the hilarious reviews of things like wolf t-shirts on Amazon. Funny or not, these reviews are not genuine and pose a threat to consumers who could be misled into wasting money on goods and services that don’t deliver.

To see how much of a problem this really is, Reevoo teamed up with YouGov to see how many people were even aware that companies write fake reivews of their products and services online and how many people have actually been misled by fake reveiws.

41% of UK shoppers do not realise that fake reviews even exist online. This moves up to 47% of older shoppers in the 45-54 year group. That’s nearly half of older shoppers who are at risk of falling for fake reviews and wasting their money. In the run-up to Christmas, this could mean bad news for millions of shoppers.

Almost one in 10 people have been misled by a fake positive review and wasted their money on something that didn’t live up to how it was reviewed online.

For more information on the research, check out our Reevoo press page.

Reevoo was born out of our founders’ quest for providing shoppers with real reviews but we think now is the time to really shout about it and try and help shoppers as best we can, all over the Internet.

Even though there are now laws against falsely representing oneself as a consumer (The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008), the Internet is impossible to completely police so we’ve drawn upon the powers of social networking to try to get shoppers to help others by reporting fake reviews.

Join our Shoppers Against Fake e-Reviews (SAFER) page on facebook and find out how to spot fake reviews, report your findings and make online shopping a better experience for everybody.

Say no to fake reviews – shop SAFER

How Reevoo makes sure all reviews are 100% real - from people who have definitely bought the product.

The Reevoo team have been hard at work finding even more ways to help you get the best products at the best prices. When you’re browsing our product pages, you’ll find that our price comparison lists now include details of promotional codes that’ll get you discounts.

Here are today’s prices* from the Samsung LE32B450 page, for example. When you find a discount code, you can click on it to see the full details (including expiry date). When you go through to the retailer’s site, you’ll usually have to paste the code from the table into their checkout page.

*As we’re always updating the site to get the best and most accurate prices, they may have changed by the time you read this post.

All week we’ve been running Reevoo’s first ever giveaway. We’ve got one model of the extremely hard to get hold off Tesco Hifi - voted ‘Britain’s Best Hifi‘ in the recent Reevoo Customer Choice Awards.

We’ve had lots of great entries on Twitter, but we reckon the prize should go to the person who went the extra mile and sent us a picture to show us why he needed a hifi so badly.

@reevoo I need to #winahifi because I’m a poor student currently stuck with this tiny little speaker — jamesctaylor

Well James, we’re happy to be able to help out a poor student, with - brace yourself - Britain’s best-rated hifi!

And if that wasn’t enough, we’re also going to throw in a copy of the White Lies album, To Lose My Life.

James, if you let us have your address we’ll send through the hifi, and you can look forward to having to make some room on your bookshelves for this:

Look out for more Reevoo giveaways coming soon!

Reevoo’s First Giveaway

Hours after Reevoo announced that the Tesco Value MC-907 Hi-Fi had trounced the opposition in the first Reevoo Customer Awards the machine was sold out across the Country!

In an effort to prevent enormous public outcry Reevoo are giving away one copy of the glimmering gold champion of music lovers’ eardrums!

There’s a catch though. Not just anyone is worthy of the public’s favourite Hi-Fi, you’ll have to prove it truly deserves pride of place on your mantlepiece this summer, and you’re going to have to think creatively if you want to win.

At Reevoo we want the last remaining model to go to the most deserving person out there so show us how much you need the thumping bass in your life by sending us your finest picture, poem or paragraph showing and explaining why you’re truly worthy of Britain’s greatest Hi-Fi. We expect to see air guitar pictures, romantic song lyrics and at least one person brave enough to dress up like someone from The Archers.

A Hi-Fi is nothing without music so we’re giving away the new White Lies album To Lose My Life too.

How to Enter

Being big fans of all things internet we would like to invite you to use your favourite blog site or Twitter to communicate your passion for this mighty prize to us!
Just answer this simple question:

‘Why do you or someone you know deserve to win a new Hi-Fi?’

Blog entries

If you blog your entry make sure you link directly to this post at http://www.reevoo.com/decidewhattobuy/2009/05/win-britains-favourite-hi-fi

and feel free to use images to accompany your post.

Twitter

If you use Twitter begin your tweet with

@reevoo I need to #winahifi because…

By doing this we can keep track of all entrants. You can also search Twitter for #winahifi and see how you compare to the competition!

If you want to add an image to show how much you need the Hi-Fi you can use the popular Twitter image uploading service, Twitpic.

What if I’ve never used a blog or Twitter?

If you’ve never blogged or used Twitter before don’t worry, it’s easy! Simply visit Blogger to get started blogging or Twitter to start writing your own Tweets.

Closing Date

The closing date for the competition is 3pm 15/05/09. Be sure to check back on Decide What To Buy the following day to find out if you’re the lucky winner.

Please follow this link for full Terms and Conditions.

Reevoo is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Reevoo Consumer Choice Awards! The winning products were found from over half a million reviews written by confirmed purchasers up to 1st April 2009. There were some surprise winners including the £16 Tesco Value MC-907 Hi-Fi which amazed everyone to take gold in the Hi-Fi category.

Big winners included Sony, who were awarded gold and silver in the television category, and TomTom with a clean sweep in the sat nav category. Nikon took the prize for best digital camera and Canon won gold in the camcorder category.  UK-based vacuum cleaner manufacturer Numatic won an impressive silver award for its Hetty vacuum cleaner.

Apple were gold winners the laptop category, but only managed a bronze in the MP3 and iPod category. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the iPhone failed to make the top three in the mobile phone category, with Nokia winning gold and bronze and Samsung taking silver.

For the full details, check out www.reevoo.com/awards or check out the table below.

Winners:

Value for money awards:

Need something to while away the days until the bank holiday? Well look no further than the Feel-Like-Love machine. It’s an interactive shopping list with a naughty twist.

Read reviews from shoppers who have found products that they absolutely Love, find out how they make them Feel and which bits they Like best. But also, what they Hate about poducts.

Get clever and find the hidden functionality and access to the secret vault of saucy reviews.

And best of all, you can embed it all on your own blog or website – even the naughty version…if you can find it. Just click “embed this” in the bottom right and copy the code to your blog or website. Here’s a sneak preview of the embedded versions…

© reevoo.com | more »

and now for some sauce…

© reevoo.com | more »

Jacqui Smith’s husband could have saved himself a whole heap of trouble. It’s not too late Richard…

**Please be warned that the saucy version does contain adult content.**

At Reevoo we’re about more than just reviews. We’re about the whole process of buying and enjoying something cool and new. With that in mind the three resident Category Managers, Jo, Sam and Jon have taken some time to lay out some helpful tips across three different product categories.

Reevoo Washing Machine Buyers Guide

Jo’s Washing Machine guide should help get you out of a spin and into the right shopping cycle with her top 5 tips designed to help you decide which washing machine is the right purchase for you.

For a full guide of the 5 tips, just click play below or check the video out as you shop on the Reevoo washing machine category page itself.

The Tips:

- Plumbing
- Dimensions, Loading and Appearance
- Capacity
- Usage
- Additional Features

The Video:

In the busy and sometimes confusing market of MP3 players Sam’s Top 5 purchasing Tips should be music to your ears:

The Tips:

- How Will I Use It?
- How Much Storage Do I Need?
- Do I Want To Watch Video?
- Watch Out For Battery Life
- Is An iPod the Best Option?

The Video:

For a full, step by step walkthrough of the above tips check out the video below or on the MP3 Player category page on Reevoo.com

Jon’s camera guide walks you through the features and settings that come into play when taking a photograph. The guide should help you decide what type of camera you want to snap up!

The Tips:

- The Sensor
- ISO Settings
- Megapixels
- Aperture
- Shutter Speed
- Exposure

The Video:

As with the other guides Jon’s can be seen on the Digital Camera Category page whilst looking through the compact and SLR camera reviews on Reevoo. If you don’t want to go anywhere just hit play below!

We like people’s comments and opinions at Reevoo and we have our own as well!
Why not add us on Twitter to see what we’re chatting about in the office today?

Our Tweeting will offer you insight into how we work and the technologies and trends we’re following most keenly. Of course if we spot a new bargain on Reevoo we’ll be shouting about it on Twitter for you all to hear!

To add us on Twitter just click the links on the right hand side of Decide What To Buy, under the Twitter logo.
I’ll (jonnyapps) be talking mainly about Digital Cameras and computing, Jo (the_chipstick) is full of exciting mobile phone tweets just waiting to burst out and Sam (Sambos) is the man to follow for interesting updates about anything that provides home entertainment in your living room.

If you’ve not used Twitter before you can sign up to it here.
Think of Twitter as being a lot like a text message or a Facebook status update. You can ‘tweet’ your thoughts and interesting links and talk about whatever you wish.

You can visit Twitter directly here: www.twitter.com
Mobile devices such as the iPhone and the Blackberry 8900 Curve can be used to tweet on the go.

After some great feedback on our Reevoo iPhone app from Graham Charlton at ecounsultancy we jumped at the chance to act on some suggested improvements.

After a few hours of work we’re pleased to say that the Reevoo iPhone app now allows you to compare prices between various retailers!

So now, when you’re out on that spending spree, not only will your shopping choice be empowered by thousands of customer reviews at the touch of a button, you will also be able to see which stores stock the product and at what price!

As well as being able to compare retailers we made even further improvements.
After you’ve read reviews and seen the various retailer prices you can now choose to surf to the retailer store directly on your iPhone.

You can also choose to email yourself, or anyone else, a link of the Reevoo product page you are viewing. This way, if you’re browsing on the bus or wandering through a store, and want to take a bit more time before committing to a purchase, you can send yourself a reminder.

Installing the iPhone App
To add the updated Reevoo iPhone app to your home screen just unlock your iPhone and:

1. Open Safari
2. Navigate to http://www.reevoo.com/iphone
3. Tap the + button in Safari and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’

What’s left to do?
You’re probably now wondering if it could get any better, and we’re confident that it can, with your help.
We love customer reviews, so why not tell us what you think of our iPhone app. Give us good points and bad and one suggestion for an improvement you’d most like to see implemented. We’ll collect your opinions and implement the best idea.
Leave your review in the comments section of this post or email any of the category managers with your ideas to feedback@reevoo.com

If you’re all done with your Christmas shopping, you might be holding out for the sales so that you can grab some bargains. But instead of braving the crowds in search of that TV you’ve been after or that MP3 player that’s just a little too pricey at the moment, why not let us do the hard work?

If you have a particular product in mind, just find it on www.reevoo.com and click on the price drop alert to the right of the product or the one on top of the pricing table:

Then just enter your email address and click submit. It’s as easy as that.

If you’re still looking for Christmas gifts for your loved ones, take Reevoo with you to the shops so that you can make sure you’re spending your money on something good.